


Selkie Wife

by tigriswolf



Series: dark fairy tales [12]
Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, Kidnapping, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Murder, Poetry, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Sexual Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-06 00:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She bore him two fine sons and a lovely daughter, always listening to the sea. </p><p>[selkie wife retelling]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Selkie Wife  
> Written: February 26, 2013  
> Note: In my Fantasy&Folklore class, we had to present a traditional tale. As I researched my choice, the selkie wife, I grew angrier and angrier. Then this happened. The version I told in class was slightly different, but I kept one very important detail the same.

He found the skin  
One beautiful day, midmorning and bright.  
He kept it, of course, hidden well out of sight.  
She searched and searched  
And finally knocked on the door.  
He knew her for what she was  
And told her, “Be my wife.”  
She agreed, of course.  
Don’t they always? 

_(Yes, they do.  
At first.)_

He had work that took him far from home,  
But now he had a wife to clean and  
Have dinner ready when he came tromping in.  
He claimed her at night,  
This lovely woman who could not say no  
Or risk her true-self destroyed.  
She bore him two fine sons and a pretty daughter  
And she smiled and kissed him  
And always always listened for the sea  
Whenever he was inside her. 

_(The sea, the sea, the sea  
Roaring in wait.)_

He never went to the skin.  
Truthfully, he forgot where he’d hidden it,  
Far from prying eyes,  
As far from the sea as their village could be.  
His sons grew tall and worked beside him,  
Out on the ocean  
Where the seals played.  
His daughter heard the sea  
No matter where in town she went,  
And one day,  
In a hole in the ground  
In a box of stone and shell  
She found a luxurious fur.  
Never had she seen something so lovely.  
Of course, she brought it home to her mama.

_(Home again, my love.  
Home again soon.)_

One touch and she knew.  
One glance and she yearned.  
She smelt the salt air  
And heard the wind churning up the water  
And she told her daughter, “Don’t tell your father.”  
Ocean howled in the words and her daughter swore. 

_(Years taken.  
Will be taken back.)_

She waited until the children were in bed.  
She waited until her husband snored,  
Barely able to use her before falling asleep.  
She waited until the moon was high,  
High as the sun the day she’d been stolen.  
She waited until she could not wait a moment longer.  
She woke him with a kiss  
And he turned to her sleepily,  
Stretching out his neck as he sought another kiss.  
Never had she been stronger as when  
She kissed his throat with the blade of the knife used for slicing fruit.  
He choked, he gurgled, he reached for her with fumbling hands  
And she watched, calm as the shallows, as he collapsed. 

_(They always stay  
Until they don’t.)_

Their sons slept on.  
Their daughter met her at the door.  
“Will you come with me to the sea?” she asked,  
Home warm in her hands.  
“I’ll come with you to the shore,” her daughter said,  
Crashing waves loud in her ears. 

_(Home again, home again,  
Home again soon.)_

She tore off a woman’s nightclothes;  
She kicked away a woman’s shoes.  
She threw all trappings of a woman’s life away.  
Her daughter watched and stayed silent  
Until they both stood in the sea,  
Her skin around her shoulders  
About to make her whole again.  
“Wait,” her daughter said, reaching for her.  
“I’ve heard the sea all my life, too.”  
She looked her daughter in the eye  
And the girl asked, “Am I like you?”

_(Freed, freedom, free  
Warm waters, cold waters, coming to me)_

“You could be,” she answered.  
Her daughter glanced back to the town,  
To the moon high above the water,  
To her mother, wild as the wind.  
Her brothers slept; she knew her father was dead.  
Waves crashed on the shore and a storm built on the air.  
Her mother held out a hand  
And her daughter closed her eyes  
And together they dove beneath the water  
Both as they should be again.

_(Swim far from the shore you’ve walked,  
The shore you were taken from.)_

There was no husband in the sea;  
She had yet been too young,  
Still curious and naïve about landfolk.  
There was no family in the sea;  
They had all moved on when she didn’t come home.  
But she had her daughter,  
And she had her freedom,  
And she had the entire sea.  
“Are you happy?” her daughter asked,  
Looping and diving and laughing.  
“Yes,” she laughed in reply.  
“I’m happy again.” 

_(Don’t leave your skin on land,_  
 _We caution our daughters_.  
 _Don’t trust in landfolk_ ,  
 _We warn our sons_.  
 _No one will fight for you_ ,  
 _We tell our children_.  
 _You must fight for yourself_.) 

She watched her daughter  
Chasing fish and investigating whales,  
And she knew, deep down where she still  
Had blood pooling across the bed,  
That her daughter would always be safe, always be free,  
No matter the blood spilt upon the ground.


	2. the story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I had to tell a traditional folktale in class, and I wrote a poem for it. I went back and reread the story I'd written and then (mostly) memorized, and I thought, why not post it here, too? So here 'tis. 
> 
> Same warnings as the poem.

Once upon a time, in a village by the sea, a strapping young man went walking along the shore. He was a fisherman and a fisherman's son and a fisherman's grandson, and he had spent most of his life on the water, so he knew well the legends of the ocean and all who dwelled there.

So when that strapping young man saw the fur bundled beneath the rocks, he knew what he'd found. Because in those days, there were selkies, a race of people with two skins. They could take off their seal-skin, the one for the water, and walk on two legs as if they were landfolk like you and me, more beautiful than any human woman you've ever seen. Their men are mighty fine, too, but we're not here to talk about the men. 

The fisherman knew that he'd never find a more beautiful bride than a selkie wife, so he snatched that bundled fur up and hid it away. 

That night, a woman, prettier than any you've ever seen, knocked on every door of every house out by the bluffs. None of them could say they'd found a fur coat (that's what she called it, of course, but most of them knew what she was looking for. As I said, selkies were common in those days) until the last door she knocked on. Then, the fisherman opened the door and he told her that he'd destroy the fur if she didn't become his wife and give him sons. 

What could she do but agree? 

It was a small wedding since the fisherman's parents were long dead and his sisters had all moved to live with their husbands' families. The selkie cooked and cleaned and gave the fisherman two sons and a daughter. She gossiped with the neighbors and attended church on Sundays and raised her children until the sons were big enough to go out on the water. Her daughter, she kept at home with her. 

Years passed. Years and years and years, while she cooked and cleaned and waited for the fisherman to finish with her. Always, through it all, she listened to the sea and searched everywhere she could imagine that a man might hide a fur.

Everyone knew what the fisherman's wife was, of course. She was too beautiful to be landborn. Her daughter was just as beautiful, or would be, one day, when she'd grown into herself. But no one spoke of what they knew, and no one ever acknowledged that she once knocked on their door looking for a fur.

Whenever the fisherman went down to the tavern, he'd talk to all the fellows about his wife and how perfect everything was, how he'd found himself the perfect little wife. While his friends complained (and oh, they complained) about nattering wives and children underfoot, about the tax collector and the wild sea, the fisherman just smiled because ever since he'd hidden that fur, the sun smiled on him and nothing could go wrong. 

That's the magic, you see. And that's the curse. 

Because the seaborn aren't like the landborn, and the fisherman had never thought to move the fur after hiding it, all those years ago. And when the location slipped his mind, he didn't think to worry about it. By then, his wife was nursing their first son with their second growing in her belly, and his wife did everything he said without hesitation or complaint. 

What more could he want? What more indeed.

But his sons grew tall and his daughter fair, and his wife searched for her fur every day he went to the sea. 

His wife didn't find the fur, though. Their daughter did. She found the fur in a box made of shell and stone, and she brushed her fingers through the thick, soft hair, still as fresh as the day her mother took it off to visit with her family as women. The daughter didn't know what it was, beyond beautiful, so she took it home to her mother.

The closer the fur came to her, the louder the sea roared, until she stood in the door to her husband's house and watched her daughter walk up the path, the fur around her shoulders like a cloak, excited because it was the most luxurious thing she'd ever touched. 

The fisherman's wife did not lay a single finger on the fur, not yet. But she hid it again, her daughter watching, and then her daughter asked, "Mama, why is the sea so loud?" 

She looked into her daughter's eyes and said, "Child, it's time you knew the truth."

While the fisherman and his sons fished in deep water, his wife told her daughter about the sea, the fur on her shoulders, the long years of watching the tide and yearning, remembering, planning. 

Oh, yes, how she had planned. And with her fur finally in reach... 

The daughter had always loved swimming, so she asked, "Will you take me with you?" 

"Of course," she said, "if that is what you want." 

That night, the fisherman and his sons trumped into the house with great joy; they'd caught a surplus of fish, enough to save till the end of the season and to sell for extra money. The wife and daughter had a feast already prepared, and the sister laughed with her brothers while the fisherman kissed and kissed his wife. All was well. All were happy. 

The wife was the last one to bed and she blew out the candle with a smile.

Now, what comes next, my own mother's mother saw. She was the healer the younger son ran for, when the boys found their father bloody and still, and their mother and sister gone. She was the one who found the knife, still wet with salty water and sticking out of the fisherman's throat. 

Those who remembered the young woman who came knocking on doors understood, knew exactly what had happened. The sons, of course, had no idea. The priest took them in, and they kept fishing out on the deep water. Nobody could be sure what went on that night, but they say the fisherman's wife and daughter walked into the waves, and the selkie bride put her fur about her shoulders and sang the magic to give fur to her daughter, and they swam and swam until our village was naught but a bad dream half remembered in the light. 

But no one knows. 

They say, though, that no man ever again stole a fur, at least not in that village, and the fisherman's sons always watched the waves, hoping their mother and sister would return. 

They never did, and that's a fact. The sons married and had children, and they fished the deep water, and they grew old, and they died, but the fisherman's wife and her daughter never set foot on our shore again. At least, that's what my mama mama's said, and she should know.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a comment reminded me that I had a snippet I hadn't posted here yet. 
> 
> Prompt: any, any,
> 
> may came home with a smooth round stone   
> as small as a world and as large as alone.
> 
> For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)   
> it’s always ourselves we find in the sea  
> \- e.e. cummings

She'd always been drawn to the sea. Her brothers went out to fish with their father, and she stayed at home to help Mama, but sometimes, Mama would release her from her chores, something sad about her, and say, "Go play in the waves, little love." 

Mama never went near the shore. She'd tell stories about the ocean, but she wouldn't even step onto to the beach. So she brought the ocean to Mama instead, shells and rocks she'd find, small pieces of driftwood, little things that caught her eye, that she thought Mama would like. 

Whenever she ran into town to pick up spices or cloth (Mama didn't like going into town, either), she'd still hear the waves, still hear the tide. Whenever a storm blew in, she'd settle with Mama in the innermost room of their home, while her brothers talked about their catch (fish or women, it wasn't clear) and Papa told Mama about how the ocean had been.

Thankfully, storms didn't blow in often, but even while listening to the roaring wind above them, something about the crashing waves was soothing. 

"It'll be alright, little love," Mama promised, even though she was nearly thirteen, now, and Papa had been talking about finding her a husband. 

It's not on the shore, that she finds the box with the fur hidden inside. She'd been wandering high up away from town, the furthest from the ocean she'd been in all her years, but there was a faint noise she'd followed, similar to the ocean, to the heartbeat she heard at night while trying to sleep. 

The box is old, the lock easily breakable, and she smells the sea as she flips the lid open. 

The fur is the most luxurious thing she's ever touched, so she brings it home to Mama.


End file.
